


memento mori

by gloriouswhisperstyphoon



Series: death and all her friends [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020), The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Based on Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, Booker | Sebastien le Livre-centric, Gen, Mentions of the rest of the team - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:47:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26365168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloriouswhisperstyphoon/pseuds/gloriouswhisperstyphoon
Summary: “Death’s a therapist now?” he laughs, before his face briefly falls and he pastes the smile back on. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes this time.[Or: Sebastien le Livre and Death of the Endless sit down for a chat. It goes better and worse than you might expect.]
Series: death and all her friends [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1915945
Comments: 1
Kudos: 30





	memento mori

“The only reason people die, is because EVERYONE does it. You all just go along with it. It's RUBBISH, death. It's STUPID. I don't want nothing to do with it.”

\---

He’s late. 

That’s alright, it’s no skin off my nose. Everyone arrives in due time. 

There’s a short tinkle of the bells over the coffee house door before he stalks in, dishevelled and sweating slightly. It’s been a long ten years for him since we last met - he doesn’t look any older, that’s not how this game really works, but anyone who knows him can see how he’s tired - the slouch in his shoulder, the tightness around the mouth, and all that.

There’s a car that backfires down the road and I can see him jump involuntarily at the sound. A little part of me vanishes to escort them to what lies beyond. I’m everywhere and nowhere at once - It’s all the trappings of life, but sometimes it can get unbearably loud and long.

I’ve seen him out of the corner of my eye for the last ten year, fighting and killing - bloody things, but I’ve seen worse - droughts and famines and plagues and war. Life can be brutal like that. Each time, I can see the weight of the years sit heavier and heavier on his shoulders as he keeps going, a small part of him still the deserter on the dead tree in the middle of a frozen plain begging me to let him die. But for now, it’s a sunny day and we’re in a coffee shop in Paris. It’s changed a little since our last meeting, more decorative foliage and slightly more sparse table decor, but it’s the same place still. 

Meeting every 10 years in exchange for him telling me about life. It seems like a good bargain for me, but then again, I’m not the one who has to live it.

He pulls back the chair with a sharp scrape and I wince a little, before he slumps into it, barely pulling off his sunglasses before he decides it’s probably better to keep them on in the light. There’s an awkward beat of silence.

“You look tired,” I say, in lieu of anything else to say. I’m not in the habit of saying much - there’s not many people I can talk to regularly, after all. 

He lets out a deep sigh and looks at his hands, still as unmarked as they were all those years ago, before looking up and giving a rictus of a grin, tight and almost unpleasant. “It’s been a very long - God, how’s it already been ten years?” he asks, before leaning back and taking a long slug of coffee. 

“You’re not spiking it this time?” I ask, a gentle joke. The last time we met, he was taking pulls from his flask almost as much as he was from his coffee cup.

He shakes his head. “Dying from alcohol poisoning? Don’t recommend it.”

I raise an eyebrow. “You’ve had a long ten years.”

“Where do I even start?” he asks, letting out a long breath, almost like he’s been holding it in for too long.

I shrug. “I know someone who would say that you’ll find the story when it comes.”

He laughs. “How’s that working out for them?”

“I’m not sure. How would you feel if Death was your older sister?” I answer, with a wry smile, before cocking my chin at him. “But that’s not why we’re here. Take the time you need.”

I’ve gotten to know him well (or at least, well enough) over the past two hundred years, so I can tell when he’s starting to chew on a problem, to get down to the grist of it. I don’t have to wait long. He’s still a soldier at heart, still listening and cowering before authority, even as he tries to push against it. 

He lets out a deep breath. “It’s been so long,” he says, the words forming slowly. “I just - I betrayed my friends and I thought - almost like I was doing them a favour, but I wasn’t. I think - sometimes you just want to end it, you know?”

“I don’t think anyone quite understands like I do. But no,” I say, trying to keep my voice light. “The work’s never quite done. Everything has a beginning, just as everything has an end. Mine is not now, and neither is yours, Sebastien le Livre.”

“I - They were right, you know, to exile me. One hundred years alone for my betrayal. Seems like a fair bargain.”

A part of me is near them right now, as they’re hacking their way through another operation, ready to whisk the dead away. I suspect it’s similar for him - he can’t let go of them. The moment stretches on. So does life. 

“So you’re saying there’s no end in sight, just watching everything around me get old and die and I’ll still be here at the end of the fucking world?” he says. 

I turn over the words in my head before I settle on the right ones. “I would say that -” I pause for a moment here. “Death defines a life, but it’s not everything about it. I mean, your friends -”

He waves his hand as he cuts me off, laughing, a bitter and broken sound from his lips and there’s the distinctive sheen of tears in his eyes. “You think they’re going to forgive me? My only friends - you’ve seen Andy now, I’m pretty fucking sure. You know she’s mortal now? I did that to her, I injured her and she nearly died -” he swipes at his eyes, his voice stuffy. “You were right, you know. You’ve seen all of this - this shit - from the beginning and I don’t think I’m any better than I was when we first met. I’m just making the same mistakes over and over again. 

“I’ve just had more time to make mistakes. People don’t change - not as much as you seem to think they do, at least.”

I can hear the wind outside shifting, a cold bitter bitch-knife of a wind that’s cutting through the clothes and whistling down the streets, kicking up the leaves like old flotsam left high and dry. The waitress outside starts to shiver with the sudden cold and a sharp gust briefly blasts the door in, everyone’s heads turning towards the noise. Except ours. 

“Do you know why you choose us?” he says, his lips twisting. “What is it, a joke to you?”

There’s no point trying to misunderstand the question, loaded as it is. In truth, I don’t know either, just that some people in history just shine, but it’s not worth giving him the gentle lie over the harsh reality. “I don’t know now just as I didn’t know when we first agreed to keep meeting. It’s not my choice about why you’re chosen, you just are - you’re lucky. You get to choose what you do with it all.”

“Death’s a therapist now?” he laughs, before his face briefly falls and he pastes the smile back on. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes this time. “I don’t think that’s what Nile meant when she said I needed one.”

Nile. It takes a moment to fit the face to the name - I remember her, still, bleeding out on that dirt floor for the first time. It’ll be awhile before we meet properly again, though. She shines too brightly for that to happen any time soon. 

The silence between us grows, punctuated only by the sounds of life surrounding us, an endless barrage of noise and brightness. There’s a brief chirp from his pocket and he glances down for a moment. 

“You need to go?” 

He shakes his head. “Not just yet.” There’s a short pause as he tries to work out what to say next. “Andy -”

I cock my head. “Yes?”

“Be gentle with her, when it’s time?”

I put my hand on his where it’s resting on the table. He flinches back from the cold, but sometimes it’s important to know that someone’s out there. Even if it’s just me.

“I’ll be there for her,” I assure him as best I can. “It’s my duty and my honour and my job. Listen, even as we’re talking, I’m there for the old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone, I’m everywhere, all the time. For some folks, death is a release and for others, death is an abomination to shy away from. But I’ll be there for her, I can promise you that. The same for you, when it’s your turn.”

He nods, briefly, before pulling his hand back. 

He’s just starting to stand up, gathering his few things, before it occurs to me. “Sebastien le Livre, I must ask. Do you still want to die?”

He grins, bright and dark and full of pain and joy all at once. “Why would I do that? Death is a mug’s game. I’ve got so much more to live for.”


End file.
